Guelph resident Aaron Samuel is ‘terrified’ of what his future holds after the province announced last week it would be shuttering most safe consumption sites around Ontario, including Guelph’s.
Samuel, 34, has been using the alternative prescribing program (former safer supply program) since just after it launched in 2019 and he worries that could also end soon.
“My fear is going back to the street, because I don’t want to anymore. I’ve taken myself out of that environment,” he said.
Before the program, he overdosed again and again. His relationship with his parents was “horrific,” his mental health atrocious. Every moment revolved around getting a fix. It’s not something he wants to return to.
But it might be, if he doesn’t figure something out before the end of March.
"We are actively pursuing some options for program funding beyond March 31, but I don’t have an update yet," Melissa Kwiatkowski, CEO of the Guelph Community Health Centre, said via email, noting the alternative prescribing program is federally funded.
Samuel's decade-long addiction to opiates started when he was 18 and given a Percocet prescription.
As life unfolded, and Percocet became difficult to access, this eventually turned into a reliance on “the stronger stuff.”
“My tolerance kept going higher and higher.
“I feel like if I could (have just gone) somewhere to get exactly what I wanted, it wouldn’t have progressed as fast as it did,” he said.
He would sometimes shoplift, although mostly play guitar or panhandle to make enough money to buy drugs.
“I had no friends. All my old friends, I basically stopped talking to them. I didn’t want them to think I was a bad person.”
All that changed when he started the safer supply program.
He had tried numerous times to get clean, using methadone, detoxing, but nothing stuck.
Methadone helped, but he feels there was a lack of wraparound services to continue support.
Trying to get into rehab for long-term recovery is challenging. After detoxing, he was told it was an eight month wait, and to call every month to hold his position there. But it’s easy for the cycle to start back up in the interim.
Eventually he landed in a treatment facility in Ottawa, getting clean after a few months.
“I went to a completely new city; I didn’t know anyone, so I had no connections,” he said. “And then my dad died, so I came back to Guelph to help my mom and the cycle started again.”
He overdosed five times before landing in the program, where he said a nurse will ask what you use, how much you use, what your risk factors are, and go from there. The goal is to find the right amount of safe supply to avoid withdrawal symptoms and keep you stable.
He injects Dilaudid – a synthetic opioid called hydromorphone – seven times a day. The amount he gets is controlled, and is generally safer than street opioids because he knows the amount and its contents.
For Samuel, the medication gets dropped off every morning, “and you can go about your day,” he said.
Though he injects several times a day, besides a couple track marks, there are no obvious signs of his drug use. In fact, besides a spike-laden punk vest with a patch depicting a swastika thrown in the trash, there is nothing visibly differentiating him from anyone else, and you would probably never know unless he told you.
“When I tell people that, (they say) you don’t look like a junkie. Because other people have gaping sores and all these very serious health issues,” he said. But those issues often stem from “the unclean additives” in the drugs, whereas the pharmaceuticals accessed through safe supply are pure and by definition, safer.
Since starting the program, he’s repaired his relationship and trust with his mom, has maintained relationships, has joined a band and can keep a schedule.
“Before, I’d wake up, I’d be sick. I’d have to panhandle for five or six hours to get money to buy.”
By then it would be nighttime, he’d get high and start the process all over again.
“Now I wake up, I medicate, and I have the ability to do anything I want to do.”
He also gets Vyvanse – like Ritalin for ADHD – which he can’t get elsewhere due to his history of substance abuse.
“That’s the main benefit of the program – I’m properly medicated.”
But the province announced last week that nine provincially funded consumption sites and one self-funded site will have to stop providing safe consumption, safe supply and needle exchange services by the end of March.
The Guelph Community Health Centre’s Consumption and Treatment Services (CTS) site at 176 Wyndham St. is one of those affected because it is within 200 metres of a daycare or school.
A spokesperson for Ontario Minister of Health Sylvia Jones said community members across the province “have made it clear that the presence of drug consumption sites near schools and daycares is leading to serious safety problems,” and that the government agrees.
In place of the CTS sites, the government is investing in 19 Homelessness and Addiction Recovery (HART) hubs, which aim to provide primary care, mental health and addictions care, employment support, as well as other supplies and services like Naloxone, showers and food, but it will not allow for supervised drug consumption, safer supply or needle exchanges.
The government will also aim to add up to 375 supportive housing units, as well as addiction and recovery beds.
Countless experts have spoken out against the decision, saying it will lead to more deaths. Samuel agrees.
Samuel said the changes will only make things worse. Drug users won’t have a centralized location anymore, and will be spread out around downtown, where Samuel said they are anyway.
“Crime is never going to go away unless they address the causes of the crime – living wages, cost of living, rent, access to housing,” he said – not safe supply.
However, he said there is definitely a need for in-house trained security who can properly diffuse conflicts that arise in and outside of the facilities, something recent expert reports suggested as well.
Further wraparound supports are also needed.
Samuel himself has struggled to maintain a job for what he believes is stigma regarding his past, and said the expectation that they are supposed to use the program and then “suddenly rise up to the occasion and be the best person you can be” isn’t realistic; there needs to be more wraparound support, especially when it comes to securing and maintaining employment and housing.
“Wraparound is (more) than just going to a therapist,” he said. “A lot of these people don’t have the life experience to feel comfortable doing these things, and that’s what pushes them towards (drug use), and then they fail and get more depressed.”
Rehab isn’t the solution either.
“You go to rehab, you get off dope, and your tolerance goes down to zero. You try using (at your previous dosage) again with zero tolerance, ok you’re dead,” he said.
People have endless potential, he said, and deserve the chance to meet it.
“You have no idea of their potential, what they’re going to grow up and become. I could theoretically find the cure for cancer, but one day I get high and die. There’s the life potential of the individual that you’re saving, but then you have the expanding factor of it: the trauma that the death causes (for the) brother, sister, parent, child.
He hopes by the time the program closes, his life will be more stable with a job – “the thing I need to fill that void for the supply,” he said. “I don't know. I'm just gonna try and make sure I'm good by then.
“I'm stable now, and once it closes, my ultimate fear is it all goes back to square one, and then I can't play in the band anymore, I can't maintain this relationship with my mom and I'll be alone again.
“Am I just going to be another statistic where I overdose in a random back alley, someone finds me, and I go by the wayside,” he said. “I’m absolutely terrified.”
He’s also concerned about what the impact will mean for others, especially those currently sitting in worse positions.
Last year Guelph and Wellington County saw an all-time high of 62 drug poisoning deaths, according to the Guelph Wellington Drug Strategy. So far this year there have been 28.
Samuel said the spike in overdoses is because of toxic supply – “it’s either xylazine, nitazines or other zines.”
And when the CTS program shuts down in March, he said those numbers will rise as people return to getting and using their drugs on the street.
“It’s going to (cause) hundreds of deaths. That’s what I think they don’t get – they think it’s going to solve everything. But people are going to keep using, you’re gonna see way more needles everywhere, you’re going to see a lot more people dying in the street, shooting up in the street.”
